Disney's Bob Iger Strikes A Smug Tone

Almost as stupid a move as Jeff Zucker’s PR push about NBC Universal’s big Internet push during the week before the WGA strike where the central issue is electronic sell-through, is Disney CEO Bob Iger’s sending out a self-congratulatory memo today. The mogul boasts about “another year of outstanding financial results. We posted record net income and record earnings per share for our 2007 fiscal year, bolstered by a strong 4th quarter performance. These results stem directly from our emphasis on the creation of high-quality content across all of our businesses, backed up by a clear strategy for maximizing the value of that content across platforms and markets.” News Corp’s Peter Chernin also made rosy remarks during this week’s guidance to shareholders, including how the strike will benefit Fox in the short term. Psst, Bob and Peter, you’re supposed to stay on message and complain about how bad things are at your companies when you’re in the middle of a strike. Otherwise, the WGA might think you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. Or you can mimic NBC in the most recent Esquire (which has an article on Ben Silverman I haven’t had time to read yet) claiming that even though a show like The Office has mediocre ratings it does well in DVD sales and downloads but the network still lost a billion bucks this year. Jeez, what does Jeff Zucker have to do to get fired?

Oh, they COULD figure out how to make billions off of the Internet, but (a) they’re waiting to see if they can force the WGA to take nothing for Internet sales, and (b) why work hard and make billions of dollars when you can just do a crap job and get fired? Their golden parachutes and contract buyouts put their regular pay to shame! Look what Dick Parsons took home the other day for flatlining Time-Warner’s stock for the last 10 years: $16,000,000 as a BONUS, -plus- he gets to stay on as Chairman of the Board. Some firing!

No, the dream of the Hollywood Mogul now isn’t to make good shows & films, nor even to make money for the company… the dream is to fail huge and get a windfall payday as a means of sweeping you quietly out the door.

How Eick was forced to make Battlestar Galactica Webisodes as “promotional tools”. Like this isn’t a case of forced servitude?

Jessy S. • on Nov 9, 2007 9:05 am

True, but remember the shady accounting practices. Let’s say that an advertiser pays NBC $3.50 to stream “The Office” online. NBC posts all the shows that aired that night at 2 AM Friday Morning and at the end of that week, (Next week at 2 AM Friday) The Office has over 25 million clicks. How much has NBC made keeping in mind that Steve Carell doesn’t get a cent?

Answer: $87,500,000

Now let’s take answer that times Seven and see what we come up with.

Answer: $612,500,000

This is over a half-billion dollar profit on the behalf of NBC’s online division using only simple math from only one show and NBC has plenty of shows on the web that streamed all season and it is clear that Jeff Zucker makes well over a billion dollars for NBC. At the same time, I’ll bet that there are shady accounting practices all over corporate America, let alone Hollywood.

workin' for a dot com • on Nov 9, 2007 12:17 pm

Although I find most of the posts here very enlightening, I think you’re letting the emotional nature of the strike enter in here. Pretty much all of the majors are releasing their last quarter earnings (and possibly even fiscal year) reports this week and next. For anybody who is a shareholder in these companies (or any company), this a quarterly event where every CEO across the nation sends out a rosy email/bulletin/notice about how well the company did under their leadership. This latest from Iger is no different from any other report issued over the past several years.

There are real issues that need to be discussed and negotiated to end this strike. But not everything is about the strike. And not every comment from a CEO is a slam on the writers.